


Regarding the Snowball

by mldrgrl



Category: The X-Files
Genre: F/M, Friendship/Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-22
Updated: 2017-11-22
Packaged: 2019-02-05 07:35:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 915
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12789831
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mldrgrl/pseuds/mldrgrl
Summary: Written for podcast TheXOFiles Go Fic Yourself segment for the Tempus Fugit/Max episode.  Mulder's first idea for celebrating Scully's birthday goes wrong.





	Regarding the Snowball

He knew her birthday before he even met her.  It was in her file and he’d memorized every detail.  By the time they shook hands for the first time, he’d already had her birthday, her height, her weight, her eye color, her GPA in high school, and her score on the fitness test locked in his memory bank.  

 

So, it wasn’t for lack of knowledge that he’d failed to celebrate her birthday.  He wasn’t big on birthdays, for one thing, and for another, it just wasn’t what they did.  Though to be fair, she did wish him a happy birthday one year on her way out of the office, and he responded to the sentiment with something sarcastic, and so it was the only time a birthday was mentioned again.

 

He felt compelled though, this year, to acknowledge the day in some way.  It suddenly felt wrong that they’d known each other for four years and never celebrated a birthday.  Should anything happen, not that it would, but just in case, he wouldn’t want to ever regret never having once wished her a happy birthday.

 

He must’ve opened up every single solitary card at Hallmark, but none seemed right.  They were all too sappy or too stupid for his liking.  One of the poems, and he used the term loosely, was so exceptionally bad, he nearly pulled all the cards out of the slot to give to an employee and demand they be immediately tossed in the garbage.  It took a lot of willpower not to.

 

So, he left Hallmark empty handed, but the thing was, he needed something to distract attention from the gift he’d gotten her.  It was something he found in an issue of Skymall.  He’d ripped the page out of the magazine and shoved it into his briefcase to call in his order as soon as they’d gotten back from whatever case they were on.  

 

Originally, he’d wanted the keychain for himself, but the more he thought about it past finding it aesthetically pleasing, the more he considered it as a good gift for Scully.  By the time it arrived in the mail, he’d come to revere it as a symbol of perseverance and dedication.  Considering the circumstances, he thought it might be a nice, subtle way of asking her not to give up hope.  Of course, if she did try to read more into it, he’d insist he just thought it looked cool.

 

In lieu of a card, he thought he’d make her a cake instead.  He knew she was a big fan of chocolate and those mixes that came in the box that only required eggs and oil looked pretty easy.  According to the directions, it didn’t take very long either.  He could whip that up, bake it, frost it, and then present it to her tomorrow morning when she walked into the basement.  Better yet, since tomorrow was Friday, and they usually went for drinks at The Headless Woman on Friday if they happened to be in town, he’d have the waitstaff present it to her.  That way, she’d be sufficiently embarrassed by the singing and the clapping and wouldn’t think very much about the keychain.

 

The recipe called for 3 large eggs and ⅓ of a cup of oil.  His eggs were small, so he used 4.  It didn’t specify the type of oil, so he went with olive oil.  Allegedly olive oil was better than vegetable, so if Scully tried to protest that the cake was too fattening, he’d tell her he used the healthier one.  He wasn’t sure if the size of his pan matched the one on the box, but all the batter fit into it, so he figured it was okay.  He put it in the oven, waited the requisite twenty-five minutes, and then pulled it out.  It seemed a little gooey though, so he put it back in for another five minutes and took it out again.  It was still kind of gooey, but the top was starting to burn, so he turned off the oven to let it sit in the heat for awhile.

 

The cake did not look quite right when he finally took it out.  It stuck to the pan when he tried to move it to a plate and it fell out in clumps.  He figured he might be able to glue it back together with frosting, but the frosting kept sticking to the cake and the cake got stuck to his knife, so that he was just smearing it all together until it was a mass of goo and frosting and didn’t resemble a cake at all.  He gave it an experimental taste, wondering if it still tasted good despite looking terrible, but it tasted just as awful as it looked.

 

Frustrated, Mulder threw the cake into the garbage and piled all the dirty dishes into the sink.  His plan was ruined unless he could think of something to replace the cake with at eleven o’clock at night.  The supermarket was closed, so he couldn’t even do what he should’ve done in the first place and just bought a cake from them.  He could stop by a bakery in the morning, but he didn’t think the one by his apartment was even open when he left for work.  He decided to walk to the bodega on the corner and see what he could find.  Even if it was just a Twinkie, it would have to do.

 

The End


End file.
